If you keep bees, you will hopefully be harvesting a good honey crop at some point. In this episode we cover the three key factors that are most important for increasing honey production.
Imogen reads from Steve's blog post of 1st September 2024
00:53 Queens
The importance of the queen in a honey bee colony cannot be overstated
02:37 Gruff Rees reviewed "Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives" by Paul Horton and Steve Donohoe, calling it "the best beekeeping book ever". We'll take that.
02:40 Comparison between colonies headed by my normal queens and four which contained queens made by Ivan Nielsen in Denmark. It turned out that the Nielsen queens made lots more honey. Nielsen says that the aim is for honey to be uniformly spread over all colonies, rather than have some monsters and some small ones.
04:40 What makes a good queen? Prolific queens will lead to bigger honey crops, but only if forage is available and the weather is good.
05:50 Starvation and having to feed syrup in early June.
06:00 Buying queens. Quality will vary, as with all natural things.
06:40 Making your own queens
07:15 Heavy queens tend to be better
07:30 Ideal conditions for making queens.
07:50 Controlling Disease and Parasites - the second important factor in producing a good honey crop. Chalkbrood, European foulbrood, varroa mites and associated viruses, chronic bee paralysis. The treatment protocol followed by Steve and Alex at Walrus Apiaries. Formic Pro. Thymovar. VarroMed.
10:38 Forage and Nutrition - the third important factor.
Fixed apiaries versus migratory beekeeping.
11:20 When to feed? Sugar and pollen substitute. Importance of pollen stores in Autumn.
13:00 Sugar contamination risks. Manley's thoughts on syrup feeding in May. Timing of feeding for winter stores.
14:20 Summary
Hello friends, welcome to The Walrus and the Honey Bee podcast. I'm Imogen, and I will be reading from Steve's blog post from 1st September 2024 called "How to Increase Honey Production: The Three Factors That Matter Most." Steve runs Walrus Apiaries in Cheshire, UK, assisted by his son Alexander. If you want to learn about increasing honey production then sit back, relaqx, and listen on. Here we go.
Cards on the table: there are actually four critical factors, in my opinion, but one of them is not something we can influence. I’m talking about the weather, of course. The weather might even be the most important one – so I’ll ignore it! Ha ha. This walrus has gone crazy. Three is a good number for a headline. Ten is good too, but that’s more like a book than a blog post. So, three it is, and here they are:
1. Queens
I don’t believe that the majority of beekeepers realise just how influential queens are. They are everything. Great queens lead to great everything else, with a few extra bits and bobs thrown in. I know I’m probably unhealthily obsessed with them, but queens are where it’s at, if you want honey. I have written a lot about queens, and research papers continue to be published about them. The honey bee colony is a super organism, with each caste and age-group playing complementary roles, but what a difference the queen makes. It’s remarkable.
As it happens, I sell queens – as nucleus colonies – and I get good feedback from customers. I suppose you only ever hear the good stuff. Maybe there are people who bought rubbish off me, but they either didn’t notice because they are used to rubbish, or they would rather not upset me or be rude. It’s the same with my books. Every so often I get approached by readers who say how much they enjoy my books (thanks by the way). I suppose most people are too polite to walk up to me and tell me that my book is garbage. It’s probably different online, but I don’t really check there very frequently. I have just deactivated my X (formerly known as Twitter) account, actually, because it became a toxic sess pit.
If anybody has read ‘Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives’ and enjoyed it, Paul Horton and I would very much appreciate it if you write a review on Amazon. Some scoundrel gave us a 1-star rating with no review, which drags the average down as we have had so few reviews in total. Gruff Rees of Gwennyn Gruffydd kindly gave us a lovely review earlier this year, on his excellent YouTube channel. He reviwed our book calling it "the best beekeeping book ever." That will do for me.
This Season – Queen Comparison
In my 2024 honey production colonies the majority of the queens were made by my good self, or they were daughters of my queens, but there were four made by Ivan Bjorholm Nielsen which I obtained from Paul Horton. These are the bees that Paul uses, and I thought I would compare them to mine. They came from Himmerland in Denmark, on a latitude somewhere between Dundee and Aberdeen. Average honey yield per colony was as follows:
Overall
Nielsen Queens 142 lb per colony
Others 78 lb per colony
Total harvest 3,777 lb (or 1.71 tons)
That’s a pretty big difference. My best colonies did as well as the Nielsen queens, but I also had some that did quite poorly, which dragged the average down for them. I should point out that I usually leave a partially filled super for the bees, which obviously is not included in my crop.
I spoke to Ivan Nielsen over dinner one evening just before The Beekeeping Show, and he said that he aims for consistency. His website puts it well:
“We do not aim for an extremely high yield on the single colony, as this kind of colony most often needs a higher level of tending for. The focus must, in our view, be on the total yield of the whole stock. A uniform yield on all colonies, with a lower input of labour hours, will in the end give a higher economical output of the whole beekeeping operation.”
I know that Paul Horton is heading for an average of over 200 lb per colony this season; possibly over 60,000 lb in total. He benefits from good beekeeping, those good queens, as well as moving bees from crop to crop. This was an incredible season for him – much better than ever before – and the crops sown under the Sustainable Farming Incentive were a big contributor to that, late in the season. Somebody should write a book about how he does it. Oh wait, we did.
What Makes a Good Queen?
From a honey production perspective, good queens are those with the ability to create and sustain large brood nests and a large number of bees. This means a colony size of 70,000 plus rather than a more typical 45,000 bees. However, the best queens head colonies that can adapt to conditions and only ‘max-out’ on laying rate and colony size if conditions are good. Obviously, we also want queens which are not unduly defensive nor prone to swarm. What’s more, such large colonies will only produce large crops if the weather allows and the forage is available.
The other side of the coin with highly prolific queens can be that they quickly starve if the beekeeper is not attentive. I think the majority of my queens are better than the average unselected ‘local queen’ but not as prolific as those used by Paul. Even so, after I took the spring honey in May this year, leaving what, I thought, were adequate remaining stores, I still ended up losing four colonies to starvation. That’s not good beekeeping. Luckily, I realised just in time what was afoot, and fed many hungry colonies in early June using frame feeders. I think it saved plenty of colonies. The weather turned, and the bees roared back into thriving honey producers.
How Do You Get Good Queens?
One way to get good queens is to buy them from a reputable queen producer. Some queen sellers don’t make queens, they buy them in and sell them on. Others use the finest breeding stock to produce their queens, which are mated in the UK. I have certain sources that I trust for breeder queens, and I’m willing to try new ones occasionally.
From what I have seen, even the best queen producers will have queens that are great, average, and even rubbish. People who do this for a living, and have done so for years, will be pretty good at producing queens. However, nature throws poor mating weather at us occasionally, and produces a range of outcomes anyway. If you make your own queens, like me, you will get better at it with practice, and you will make some great queens. They will probably be as good, or nearly so, as bought queens – maybe better – and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you did that. You followed the story from breeder queen selection to grafting larvae to cell building to mating and then introducing queens to colonies. That’s a good feeling.
Plenty of evidence and research suggests that a simple way to measure the quality of a newly emerged virgin queen is her weight. The bigger and heavier they are, the better they will probably be (greater egg laying capacity). There are exceptions, but this seems to be a pretty good ‘rule of thumb’. To get big fat juicy queens, you need ideal conditions. The most ideal conditions are those created by the bees themselves, when they start off with an egg in a queen cell. For me, grafting a larva from a worker cell within 24 hours of it hatching, and placing it into a JZ-BZ plastic cup, and then into a strong, well-fed, queenless colony with plenty of nurse bees is about as good as I can do. It’s good enough.
2. Control Disease and Parasites
This is the second critical factor in honey production.
If your bees are sick, they don’t make much honey. Who knew?! I rarely see chalk brood, but when I do I re-queen the colony, and normally, it goes away. I keep an eye out for foulbrood; if I find that, I’m in trouble, but the National Bee Unit is there to help. About 2 percent of colonies appear to have European foulbrood based on UK-wide statistics, so if you have hundreds of colonies over many years, the chances are that it will appear at some point. That’s unfortunate, but it has to be promptly dealt with.
Varroa
For most beekeepers, the single biggest threat to the health of their bees is varroa mites and associated viruses. There is also chronic bee paralysis virus, which can be devastating and a ‘cure’ seems elusive. Queens can catch viruses too, and pass them on to their offspring. The thing about varroa is that very few beekeepers monitor their colonies properly and if you start to see varroa on bees it might already be too late. Once the infestation gets high, the bees are in trouble, even after you kill the mites. The answer is simple: adopt a treatment plan that keeps the mite numbers low throughout the season. Don’t let it get out of hand.
My mite treatments this season were to use Apivar (containing amitraz) in early spring (end of Feb/early March) because it is not temperature dependant and I wanted the bees to start off in good shape. The strips were removed shortly before supers went on.
Then, in August, we treated the production colonies with Formic Pro (containing formic acid). I love the stuff, and it works well for us. We use two pads over the brood box and cut the foil wrapper in half and lay one half over the top of each pad. This reduces the initial surge of formic vapour somewhat. Two weeks later, the job is done, and the pads are removed. Quick and easy. The bees are generally in a foul mood when we add Formic Pro, but absolute angels when we remove it. I think they appreciate having the mite numbers drastically reduced. Out of 50 colonies, only two had queen cells and no queen (so they were superseding). Queen losses might be higher with smaller boxes like Nationals; we use Langstroth.
We also used Thymovar (thymol pads) on smaller colonies – nukes and mini-plus hives. That takes longer to work but I don’t think formic pads are right for small colonies. Later this year, probably in early December, we will dribble oxalic acid along seams of bees as a third and final treatment. Actually, it will be VarroMed (made with oxalic and formic acid in solution) because we like it and it’s already mixed and ready to use.
3. Forage and Nutrition
If you have large, healthy colonies of bees, you can’t make honey unless the forage is available nearby, ready to give up its nectar. My approach is to have several apiaries dotted about and hope that, as the season progresses, they catch a flow or two. There will inevitably be times when nectar is not flowing, and my bees are consuming honey rather than storing it. For my lifestyle, keeping bees where they are works. I may take a few to some borage next season, but that’s it. Many bee farmers migrate bees from crop to crop throughout the season, which means that they make more honey. Luckily, I don’t rely on honey sales for a living; that is a lot of hard work for modest financial reward.
Knowing When to Feed
As I referred to above, I managed to save plenty of colonies this season by feeding syrup in June when many were close to starvation. That’s a ‘no-brainer’ but there are other times when feeding might be a good idea. Furthermore, admittedly rarely, bees may benefit from a protein supplement as well as carbohydrates.
When I went around checking colonies in early spring, I added a protein ‘patty’ to any that seemed a little small. Some got sugar fondant which contained some pollen, and others got a yeast-based pollen substitute (I got loads of it cheap because the packaging was damaged). Bees should be building up their brood nest in spring, and to achieve that they need pollen (or equivalent). I found that they devoured the yeast-based one with the most gusto. Did it make much difference? I can’t honestly say. They ate it all. Had the spring weather been better, it may have helped more obviously. For those who want to move bees to pollinate orchards, it’s wise to give bees a boost in early spring.
It’s interesting that people are aware of the need for honey or syrup stores going into winter, but few consider pollen. The bees need to have plenty of pollen stored to help with raising brood in the spring. If spring is cold and wet, the bees rely on what they stored in the autumn, or what the beekeeper provides. Better to provide protein in spring; in autumn you may simply prolong brood rearing, which may cause problems later. Of course, if you are in California preparing for almond pollination in February, that’s a different story. I’m talking about my conditions in the UK.
The big fear with feeding syrup to bees in summer is contamination of honey in supers. My attitude is that if they are hungry, and conditions are not about to quickly change, they must be fed. There can’t be much danger of syrup getting into honey supers if they are nearly starving – surely? Compared to the risk of losing colonies…I’ll take my chances with the syrup.
Manley said this, in Honey Farming:
“May is the month of all others when it pays to feed, if there is the least shortage of food in the hives. In no case should bees be allowed to run short of stores in May. There is hardly anything on which money can be so profitably spent, as sugar for May feeding, if feeding is needed at that time: there is hardly ever a season when it is not a good investment.”
Of course, he does stress “if feeding is needed” – if they have stores, no need to feed.
As far as autumn goes, we tend to feed colonies in late September that are not heavy. We don’t seem to get any ivy honey in my area. The nucs generally require several rounds of syrup feeding. Production colonies get a jerry can of thick invert syrup if they require it (normally about half of them do). I think that feeding earlier tends to result in more bees and fewer stores, which is a bit of a waste of syrup in most cases.
In Summary
Get the best queens that you can, as there is a world of difference between good queens and the rest.
You can make queens (why not try it – it’s fun) or buy them.
Keep the bees healthy by looking out for disease and especially controlling varroa mite numbers – aim to keep mites low all season.
Finally, place hives in areas with access to plentiful forage, and feed bees if they need it.
Oh, and be lucky with the weather.
Thanks for listening, and good luck with your honey production.